


surviving like the movies

by bugsuit



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-15
Updated: 2011-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-17 00:09:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bugsuit/pseuds/bugsuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You've been flung forwards in time and sideways in space. You're on a dead planet. You're going to be fine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	surviving like the movies

**Author's Note:**

> First foray into Homestuck fic, be gentle (but hopefully constructive?) as I am a delicate little floweOH WHATEVER JUST TELL ME HOW TO BE LESS AWFUL.

You touch your fingers to your lips. They are dry and cracked, taste of salt from the sand and the sweat. You're walking, sort of trudging along awkwardly. You'd be an idiot if you went too fast or too slow. You haven't stopped all day; the ultimate endurance test, and you're on your _nth_ wind - _do the windy thing, you'll get there faster (but you can't, this isn't the game)_ \- and you're going strong. Your legs never stopped burning, but you have grown accustomed to it. The bag on your back is heavy, but this is a comfort to you. It still contains what you need. You can hear the water sloshing around the inside of the strangely-shaped bottles as your feet hit the floor, and it creates a melodic rhythm that helps to keep you going. You looted them from a smashed-up building, dark against the discoloured sand.  
You stop moving when day breaks, and you take the sheet of coloured canvas you ripped off the building and you crawl under it and go to sleep. The sun would kill you. You remember this from what Karkat told you, and thinking about this fact makes your heart ache.  
You're pretty sure your eyes are getting worse. You are laughing because you know you're not getting any better glasses, because there is no one to make glasses and the thought of finding a random, functioning optician's clinic in the middle of this post-apocalyptic desert is somehow hilarious.  
\---  
You find Rose Lalonde first. She stands atop a sand dune in the distance and at first you think you're hallucinating, but you draw closer, and your eyes meet, and then your hands, and then your bodies as you claim a hug from her that she seems all too willing to reciprocate. When you finally withdraw, she's left a wet patch on your ragged blue shirt and you reach up to wipe her eyes for her because you've seen it done in the movies. Rose gives you a geniune (if tear-stained) smile, and you forget for a moment that you're crying too. You knew you'd find someone. It was only a matter of time.  
"I know where Jade is." It is good news because you have worried so much, and her tone is a reassurance that she is still alive.  
It is bad news because Rose Lalonde knows everything, and she doesn't mention Dave.  
\---  
Jade has experimented with the sun. She tells you what you already know, that it's unsafe, and you want to tell her that you know because Karkat told you, but you open your mouth and the words catch in your throat. She gives you an odd look, a mixture of grief and reassurance, and you get your fifth hug. She tells you it's still possible, even though neither of you believe it. The words come out of her mouth and they feel a lot like being stabbed. You know what this feels like. You wouldn't be wearing your hood if you didn't.  
You don't ask about Dave. She asks you instead. You want to tell her that you're sorry, that you don't know where he is, that you're looking, that _you will find him,_ but all you can manage is a blank, hollow stare. Rose places a hand on your shoulder. Jade brings the hug total up to six.  
\---  
"C'mon, man. You didn't honestly think Dave Fucking Strider gave up and kicked the obscene troll porn pail, did you?" You're crying and you run forwards and you apologise, and you hug the everloving shit out of him and tell him how sorry you are, that man, this is more dramatic than Nic Cage's reunion with his loving wife and daughter, and he smirks and makes an ironic comment. But his voice is all wrong, smudged around the edges, very cool but very _vague._ You made it up, because you don't know what Dave Fucking Strider's voice sounds like. For a brief moment you can still see Dave's silhouette against the green flashes of fire and energy, poised in a fighting stance with Caledscratch blocking the worst of it. A clock symbol appears behind him and Jade does _something,_ and three thirteen-year-old kids are whirled into the ripped part of space and time. You see Dave get blown into the Scratch along with you as you twist your body to look back for him, but his body is limp, suit ripped and smoking, and his glasses are shattered and his eyes are closed, and you want to scream.  
You wake up to an empty feeling in your gut and you wait a while before you put on your glasses and get to your feet. You just want to think for a while. You just have to think. You'll be fine. You will be fine in a few minutes.  
You didn't even have time to speak a word to each other.  
Dave Strider isn't fine, and neither are you.  
\---  
You put on the bravest face you know. You've watched all the movies and someone always asks what's wrong because they can tell the smile isn't genuine. You half expect one of the girls to ask you if you're feeling okay, to say that they know you're not, that everything is going to be okay. Neither of them do, and your smile fades because you know they don't need you to put on a brave face. They _know_ you're not okay, they know the cliche that is expected of them and that is enough. You don't need to actually go through with it to be grateful for the sentiment behind it. Rose gives you another one of her rare genuine smiles and it's more reassuring than a cliche could ever be; Jade takes the lead today, marching ahead through the darkened dunes.  
\---  
You've found some ruins. They don't look like ruins, until you scout around the other side and half of the building is missing. Rags of material, sun-bleached and scorched from the Reckoning, hang completely still in the lack of a breeze. A meteor must have plunged through half of the structure and the rest of the tower stayed standing. No, not a tower, you correct yourself: a hive. You are the only living beings on Alternia, and you aren't even its native species. But you feel obligated to use the correct terminology. Karkat would have shouted at you.  
The hive is surrounded by the remnants of what were probably once flora, tufts of dry grass and the gnarled, blackened trunks of long-dead trees. It's the only sign that there was ever life in the desert, and yet it somehow feels even more desolate than the endless sand.  
You take the stairs. Rose and Jade are waiting outside, murmuring amongst themselves about this and that, about what they plan to do next, where to go. You keep ascending. First floor. Second floor. Third floor. You lose count and you're surprised when you come across a circular room. Half of it has been blown up, and you carefully step towards the edge where you can see the inside of the walls sticking out into space. Peering over the edge gives you the opportunity to wave at Jade and Rose. Jade calls up to you, her voice faint despite the pressing silence blanketing the planet, and tells you to be careful.  
You begin looting the place. A sense of guilt washes over you briefly, but you know there isn't anything wrong with what you're doing; no one lives here any more, you have to take what you can get to survive.  
But there is something wrong. You recognise this symbol, and for a few seconds you're trying to put your finger on it before it clicks, and you bite your lip with your goofy teeth and let go of the book you were holding, retreating back into the centre of the room. The letter 'M' is burned into your mind, and you wish it didn't have the little loop on one side because that means you're going to have to tell Rose.  
She listens to your hushed apology and even before you've finished telling her whose hive it is she is walking away from you, eyes veiled by hand supported by elbow resting on arm. Her shoulders are shaking and you make as if to go after her, but Jade grabs the ripped end of your blue god-tier hood and keeps you from moving.  
"Let her have some time alone."  
You worry for a while that she's walking too far into the distance, but you know she'll come back.  
\---  
He staggers over the horizon with his arms at his sides, the exhausted way he's dragging his feet probably not a good sign for someone who spends their entire existence trying to look as cool and unflappable as he possibly can. But he's there. You find yourself stupidly trying to ignore the single smudge of vivid red against the chalky greyish-pink of the Alternian desert. Because he can't be there, can he? It's an illusion, brought on by too much wishful thinking. Rose will give you the psychoanalysis of a lifetime if you tell her, but you don't need to tell her, because she's yelling Dave at the top of her lungs and Jade is running forwards and for a second you want to laugh at how absurd it is that everyone's having the same stupid stupid dumb hallucination.  
Except you're running after them even though you're not consciously making your feet move, and he sinks to his knees as you outpace the girls and whump, you've knocked him to the floor (that was too easy, make sure you're careful with him from now on) and there's another wet patch getting made on your shoulder. You didn't think Dave Fucking Strider would cry, it just seems like a crime against nature; but the impact of you hug-tackling him has knocked off his broken shades and for a moment he's just Dave Strider, a thirteen year old kid who has been forced to watch himself and his friends die over and over and over. He saw you die. He tells you this, and Jade and Rose have helped to lever you both up off the sandy ground, and it's turned into a group hug. He saw you die. He's sorry. He's so fucking sorry, Egbert, but you twist the lid off a bottle of water and thrust it into his hands and you tell him everything is going to be okay. Jade picks his shades up, dusts them off, and he accepts them almost hesitantly.  
"C'mon, man. You didn't honestly think Dave Fucking Strider gave up and kicked the obscene troll porn pail, did you?" You hear yourself saying it to Rose and Jade, a rehearsed sentence that he should have been saying to you, and you're laughing, and you mean it. "We're going to be fine."  
You're John Egbert. You're Rose Lalonde and you're Dave Strider and you're Jade Harley. You're going to be fine.


End file.
